American Hustle

Posted on December 19, 2013 at 6:00 pm

american-hustle

“Some of this actually happened,” the movie’s opening shot deadpans.  It is true that the United States government both threatened and paid a con man to help them con some bigger fish and then accidentally ended up conning some of the biggest fish ever caught — six US Congressmen and a Senator.  David O. Russell directed and co-wrote “American Hustle,” the story of 1970’s fraud, insanity, and betrayal, plus a lot of “what were we thinking” hair and clothes and a rockin’ soundtrack, from “Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road” to “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” “Does Anybody Really Know What Time it Is?” and the inevitable “Horse With No Name.”

The storyline has so many layers of double-cross, lies, betrayal, grandiosity, and sheer insanity that the audience may feel they are getting lost, but in a way, that is the point, and of course, that is the decade for it.  I mean, look at the home perm on Bradley Cooper, who plays the hotdog FBI agent Ricky DiMaso as something of a cross between Starsky, Hutch, and Huggie Bear.

And then there is the hair on Christian Bale as Irving Rosenfeld.  It can perhaps best be described as an edifice.  As the movie begins, we are treated to the painstaking assembly of his pompadoured comb-over, remarkable to witness and a dead-on detail that lets us know who we will be following for the rest of the film.  He is a phony, he is all about making the surface look better than it should, and  he will do whatever it takes to put forward the image that will sell whatever he is trying to sell. Ascot, check.  Pinky rink, check. Briefcase full of cash, check.

Flashback.  Rosenfeld is the master of at least half a dozen medium-sized scams when, at a party, across the room, he spies a beautiful woman.  It is Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams).  They share a love of Duke Ellington and a talent for re-invention.  “My dream” she tells us, “more than anything, was to become anything else than what I was.”

They cook up an almost-legal scam, taking  up-front fees on the promise of using their connections to obtain loans from some vaguely defined “London connections.”  All is fine until they get busted.  And DiMaso, intrigued by their world of deception, persuades them to work for him to bring down some big-time criminals.

But things get complicated and messy.  DiMaso’s boss (a terrific Louis C.K.)  is reluctant to have federal officers engage in criminal activities, even to catch other criminals.  One of the great joys of this film is when the boss keeps trying to tell DiMaso an ice-fishing story that never gets to the point because the hotheaded DiMaso keeps interrupting him.  Rosenfeld is married to an unhappy, volatile wife named Rosalyn (a dazzling performance of astonishing depth and mesmerizing assurance by Jennifer Lawrence) and stepfather to her son.  He has to find a way to resolve things with the FBI, the mob, and the politicians.

The unfinished ice-fishing story is the point.  This is not a nice, linear explanation for what happened.  This is a bunch of stories that intersect in a maze of all seven of the deadly sins plus a few that should also be on the list.  Brilliant performances by everyone in the cast (including Alessandro Nivola as an FBI official and an unbilled guest star as a guy from the mob) and a witty, insightful script are what hold it together.  Lawrence makes us furious at and sorry for her character at the same time, and she is sizzlingly funny.

The purpose of this film is not to illuminate the particular events of Abscam.  It is to meditate on the irrepressible American enthusiasm for self-invention and the thicket of betrayal and damage that can be the result.  It is about the stories we tell, even the ones like the ice fishing story that never get to make a point.  Russell himself can’t resist tweaking the details, making the characters more interesting and sympathetic than they really were.  But that wouldn’t be a good story.

Parents should know that this film has very strong adult material including constant bad language, explicit sexual references and situations, nudity, drinking and drug use, extensive criminal behavior and betrayal.

Family discussion: Who are the biggest con artists in this story?  How do the characters determine who deserves their loyalty?  Was justice done?

If you like this, try:  “Flirting with Disaster,” “The Fighter,” and “Silver Linings Playbook,” from the same director

 

Related Tags:

 

Based on a true story Crime Drama Politics Satire

Electoral Dysfunction — A New Documentary from Mo Rocca

Posted on October 28, 2013 at 3:59 pm

Election day is coming next week, and Mo Rocca (“The Daily Show,” “CBS Sunday Morning,” “Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me”) has a new documentary about the state of elections in today’s America, with the backdrop of the 2008 Presidential election.  Rocca set out on a road trip to see how voting works – and doesn’t work. He heads to Indiana, home to (then) some of the strictest election laws in the country, and meets Democrat Mike Marshall and Republican Dee Dee Benkie, who take him inside their efforts to get out every vote. As he progresses on his journey, Mo searches for the Electoral College; investigates the heated battle over Voter ID and voter fraud; critiques ballot design with fashion mogul Todd Oldham; and explores the case of a former felon who was sentenced to ten years in prison—for the crime of voting. Irreverent, engaging and nonpartisan (and selected for viewing at the conventions of both major parties), this documentary is for voters across the political spectrum who want their votes to count.

Related Tags:

 

Documentary Politics

The Fifth Estate

Posted on October 17, 2013 at 6:05 pm

B
Lowest Recommended Age: High School
MPAA Rating: Rated R for language and some violence
Profanity: Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs: Drinking
Violence/ Scariness: Some violence including murder of two people and footage of military killings
Diversity Issues: None
Date Released to Theaters: October 18, 2013
Amazon.com ASIN: B00BEIYRYM

the-fifth-estateIn late medieval times, when people first began to divide each other into groups defined by status and power, they began to speak of a “first estate” (the clergy), a “second estate” (the nobility, which also at the time meant the government), and a “third estate” (the common people.  Later, the “fourth estate” was added to describe journalists and what today we call news media.  Julian Assange, the Australian teenage hacker turned founder of Wikileaks is singular, unprecedented, gui generis.  He collects masses of “secret” data and publishes it without editing, digesting, analysing, or redacting any of it.  And so, this movie, with Benedict Cumberbatch as the white-haired Assange, is called “The Fifth Estate.”

This movie, from director Bill Condon (“Kinsey,” “Dreamgirls”), and based on a book by Assange’s now-estranged former partner Daniel Berg (played in the film by “Rush’s” Daniel Brühl) at times feels as though it is un-digested and un-analyzed.  As a government official forced to resign due to some of the disclosures says near the end of the film, “I don’t know which of us history’s going to judge more harshly.”  I would advise anyone interested in Wikileaks to begin with the documentary, “We Steal Secrets: The Wikileaks Story,” directed by Alex Gibney.

Assange says that he has two goals for what he calls “a whole new form of social justice.”  He says he wants transparency for institutions and privacy for individuals.  The problem, or, at least, one problem is that institutions are made up of individuals.  And so, when one of Wikileaks’ early scoops is a list of British members of the far right “National Party,” it does not bother him that the members’ contact information is disclosed.  Assange is an absolutist.  He refuses to edit or redact (remove identifying information from) any of the documents he publishes.  “Editing reflects bias,” he says.  He is also something of a monomaniac and a megalomaniac, at least in the view of his one-time colleague.  According to this film, he grew up in an odd Australian cult called “The Family,” with severe beatings, and has been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum.  He is very protective of his own privacy as he exposes the secrets of others.  And, as they say, just because you’re paranoid does not mean they’re not really out to get you.  Once Assange starts exposing the secrets of the wealthy and powerful, they start coming after him, and the thing about being wealthy and powerful is that they have the resources to inflict a lot of harm.  Two of his sources are murdered.

Condon does his best to minimize the scenes of people staring intently into monitors while they bang on the keyboards.  He has some nice visualizations to evoke the experiences, some fantastic, some just the rocky topography of Iceland, one of many places Assange hid.  And he takes a balanced approach.  Everyone would agree with some of what Assange has uncovered.  And everyone would object — even be horrified — by something he has done.  Both sides quote Orwell.  Big Brother is watching.  Like “The Social Network,” the movie focuses on the rise and fall of the friendship and partnership more than the impact of the product they were working on.  In this case, that is in part because we don’t know what that impact will be.  But in this case, we do know that the impact is transformational.  This is not some Facebook advertiser using an algorithm on your status posts to figure out what to sell you.  This is a 22-year-old destroying the confidentiality that allows candid conversations between diplomats, including information about the foreign nationals who are giving them information.

Assange explains early in this film that the program he has developed to protect the identity of the providers of leaked documents is to drown them in false and phony data.  He can say that editing reflects bias, but in the case of terabytes of information dumped in undigested and unredacted form, the data dump can be just as distorting.  Like the journalists Assange worked with on the Bradley Manning material, this film tries to put some shape and perspective on a story that is still too big and too new to frame as a definitive narrative.  But it is an absorbing story and as good an assessment as we can get for now.

Parents should know that this film has very strong language, violence including shooting and wartime scenes with some disturbing images.

Family discussion:  What is the answer to the State Department official’s question about whose side history will be on?  Who should decide what gets released?  If Wikileaks makes other organizations accountable, who makes Wikileaks accountable?  Do you agree with the two things Assange says you need to have to succeed?

If you like this, try: the documentary “We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks,” read up on the most recent leaker, Edward Snowden, and take a look at the Wikileaks page

Related Tags:

 

Based on a true story Drama Movies -- format Politics

Closed Circuit

Posted on August 27, 2013 at 8:00 am

closed circuitTerrorism has killed thousands of people, destroyed buildings and property, and caused seismic rifts in our notions of who constitutes “us” and “them.”   What is even more terrifying is the damage it has inflicted on our most fundamental notions of privacy and justice.  “Closed Circuit” is an up-to-the-minute thriller in which the chases and explosions are less scary than what it reveals about how ineffective our legal system is for responding to terrorism.  The damage to democracy may be more devastating than the damage to life and property.

The story begins with a shocking terrorist attack at a London market.  Two suspects died in the bombing and one died “resisting arrest.”  Farroukh Erdogan (Denis Moschitto), described as “the last man standing,” is quickly captured and accused.  The traditional judicial system cannot provide him with the rights that are accorded all defendants under UK law, including the right to examine and respond to all evidence against him and to be given any evidence the government has that might cast doubt on his guilt.  So he is given two different trial attorneys (called barristers in Great Britain), one for an open hearing, one for a separate closed hearing.  The judge soberly advises them that “you must not meet or communicate or share information in any way.”

Martin (Eric Bana) will represent Erdogan in the open hearing to the best of his ability without any access to information deemed sensitive by the government.  Claudia (Rebecca Hall) is appointed to have access to those files the government has selected as confidential.  In a complicated set of procedures, if she discovers something in those files that is relevant to the case, she can show it to the judge but not to Martin or the defendant.  This procedure is intended to provide some some fairness in an inherently unfair process we continue to refer to as the justice system.  “There is no right way out of this,” a character will say.

Claudia initially tries to withdraw.  She does not explain much but we learn that she and Martin have a history.  Even though the process prohibits them from having any contact, that past relationship makes things more complicated.

Separately, Martin and Claudia begin to believe that they are being manipulated, even threatened.  But by which side?  Is it possible to sustain a democracy, or any kind of accountability, when an official explains, “You want the freedom to attack me, but without me you wouldn’t have much freedom at all?”  It is eerily reminiscent of Jack Nicholson’s famous speech in “A Few Good Men” and Jose Ferrar’s in “The Caine Mutiny.”  Both accuse us of feeling superior to the decisions we delegate to those who guard our freedom, and our willingness to overlook the infringements of freedom that result.

As an audience, we can distance ourselves from the chases and explosions.  Our most terrifying realization is the same one Pogo made famous: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Parents should know that this film has very strong language, references to adultery a terrorist attack, chases and fights, suicide, some disturbing images of murder victims, drinking, and smoking.

Family discussion: Read up on the US FISA court and the controversy about NSA access to personal information.  How do we balance the need for national security with the fundamental guarantees of individual justice like the presumption of innocence, the right to examine evidence, and the protection against self-incrimination?

If you like this, try: “Four Lions” and “The Ghostwriter”

Related Tags:

 

Courtroom Drama Politics Thriller
THE MOVIE MOM® is a registered trademark of Nell Minow. Use of the mark without express consent from Nell Minow constitutes trademark infringement and unfair competition in violation of federal and state laws. All material © Nell Minow 1995-2024, all rights reserved, and no use or republication is permitted without explicit permission. This site hosts Nell Minow’s Movie Mom® archive, with material that originally appeared on Yahoo! Movies, Beliefnet, and other sources. Much of her new material can be found at Rogerebert.com, Huffington Post, and WheretoWatch. Her books include The Movie Mom’s Guide to Family Movies and 101 Must-See Movie Moments, and she can be heard each week on radio stations across the country.

Website Designed by Max LaZebnik